Small business websites

In one of my recent posts entitle “How can the Voice of the Customer (VoC) work for micro firms?”, I discussed the importance of harnessing the most effective methods of capturing the voice of the customer as suggested by a user survey conducted by Roger Cooper, a renowned innovation expert and author.

One such digital method of fine tuning this most valuable ability to hear, interpret and coherently grasp what customers want is via website analytics. This often underutilised continuous source of data (the gift that keeps on giving) can be utilised to enhance the micro enterprise’s understanding of why the customer hire’s (Christenson, 2008) their products or services to successfully satisfy their need.

I had no sooner released my post into the wild, when I then received a skype from Joe O’Toole. Joe was drawing my attention to a survey of ‘.ie’ SME and micro enterprise users detailed on the Irish Domain Registry (IEDR) website. While the survey findings appeared to be re-enforcing the suggestions made in my post, they also appeared to be adding further insights and suggestions which made very interesting reading.

IEDR survey was suggesting …

“Recent research undertaken by IEDR into Irish SMEs and Micro-Enterprises online presence and e-commerce capabilities has found that the vast majority of companies are not fully utilising the Internet or online sales opportunities to drive growth in their businesses.

The results of a survey of 501 Irish SMEs and Micro-Enterprises show that while 63% have a website, 91% of these are unable to process sales.”

(IEDR, Accessed: 30th April 2015)

Digging deeper into the research findings, we find that …

“While 63% of Irish SMEs have a website”

‘91% of .ie SMEs and Micro-Enterprises Don’t Sell Online!’

“Only 4% have the capacity to run analytics on their website performance.”

(IEDR, Accessed: 30th April 2015)

Ok, given all these figures, let’s do the math …

63% = 315 out of 501 have a website presence.

4% = 13 out of 315 have website analytics.

13 out of 501 SME’s and micro enterprises surveyed =

2.5% or 1 in 50

… ‘.ie’ domain users have the capacity to run website analytics on their website performance.

If this survey was reflective of a trend across all micro enterprise’s in Ireland, what would it be suggesting? Possibly it would be suggesting, 97.5% all micro enterprise businesses employing 10 or less, who also have a website presence, will have 0% capacity to enhance their ability to hear the voice of the customer utilising website analytical data.

Joining the dots … that’s a problem worth fixing!

To read the IEDR survey, please visit: